Electronic communication has become an indispensable business and personal tool. Applications such as email, instant messaging, SMS texting, Twitter, social networking sites, Bulletin Boards, Collaboration Software, and the like have become ubiquitous and are used extensively in lieu of, or in combination with, more conventional communications methods such as postal mail, telephone communication, and in person meetings.
As electronic communication has supplemented and replaced prior communication techniques its importance as evidence in transactions has grown. Particularly in litigation, due in part to the impact of Sarbanes-Oxley and other corporate governance requirements, the preservation and production of email is required in every jurisdiction.
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure have been expanded to cover electronically stored information (ESI) including emails and other types of electronic communication. This type of information must be preserved and produced in a controversy as well as in the normal course of corporate governance. A difficulty in producing electronic communications is the need to produce all the electronic communications required and only the electronic communications that are required of a party to produce. Failure to produce all requested electronic communications can result in potential loss of rights and/or penalties from governing bodies such as the SEC. Producing more electronic communications than are required can breach confidentiality and put a litigant or company in the position of revealing data that would otherwise have remained confidential.
One type of electronic communication system in use are bulletin board systems (BBS). A BBS is a computer program that allows users and guests (Collectively “posters”) to log in and participate in a number of operations, including the posting of messages related to some particular subject. Often a BBS is a special interest destination that deals with a particular subject. For example, there are BBS's for nearly all makes and models of vehicles, audio systems, consumer products, movies, television shows, performers, musicians, and the like. A BBS may be run by an individual or group, or even by a corporate sponsor or other commercial enterprise.
A BBS poster may be a registered users or a guest. Often there are tiers of users, with guests having the fewest privileges, posters who register for free having more privileges, and posters who elect to pay for membership (if offered) enjoying the most privileges.
Posters typically register under an avatar or pseudonym, although such is not typically required. However, the anonymity of a pseudonym seems to be desired by most registrants. Typically, the registrant associates their account with a particular email address, which itself may be pseudonymous.
A BBS may define a hierarchy of folders that define topics and areas of discussion. Individual messages and communications within a folder or topic are referred to herein as “postings”. A group of related postings is referred to as a “thread”. In some cases, a poster can initiate a new folder where all replies to the initial posting are found within that folder. In some cases, new threads can only be created at certain points in the folder hierarchy, and at the lowest level, for example, only replies can be posted and no new threads can be created.
A BBS may have icons or buttons such as “New Topic” or “New Thread” which will create a new discrete folder or thread. Within a thread, the poster may only be presented with “Post Reply”. In some instances, only an administrator or moderator can create a new thread or topic.
A BBS is often organized in one of two ways. One way is a “linear mode” BBS where there is no threading and sub-threading. The other way is a “threaded mode” BBS where there are threads and one or more hierarchical levels of sub-threads.
In the current art, there is not a good solution for the culling, sorting, inspection, and analysis of postings and the relationship among Posters.